A Canadian-led team of scientists has discovered the well-preserved fossil of a previously unknown, prehistoric predator that proves for the first time that a “voracious” Komodo dragon-like carnivore survived a major extinction event that killed off much of the animal life on land about 270 million years ago.

The fossilized pelycosaur — a razor-toothed beast that looked like present-day reptiles, but was actually a forerunner of modern mammals — was unearthed in South Africa and has been dated to about 260 million years, the team states in a study published in this month’s issue of the journal Naturwissenschaften – The Science of Nature.

That makes it the “youngest” specimen of its kind ever found, and shows that at least some members of its broader family of proto-mammals survived the so-called “Olson’s Extinction” event.

The die-off appears as a largely barren patch in the fossil record at numerous Permian-era sites around the world. And scientists believe Olson’s Extinction — first identified by the late American paleontologist Everett Olson — was an important precursor to the Earth’s greatest extinction event ever, when at least 90 per cent of all marine life and 70 per cent of organisms on land disappeared about 250 million years ago.

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“These animals were the most agile predators of their time, sleek-looking when compared to their contemporaries,” study co-author Robert Reisz, a paleontologist at the University of Toronto Mississauga, states in a summary of the team’s findings. “They seem to have survived a major change in the terrestrial fauna that occurred during the Middle Permian, a poorly understood extinction event in the history of life on land.”

The study of the South African specimen — hailed as “the last pelycosaur” in the journal article — was spearheaded by Cape Breton University scientist Sean Modesto, with other contributions from University of Toronto researcher Nicolas Campione and South African Museum paleontologist Roger Smith.

“These ancient animals really looked like modern goannas or monitor lizards, but are actually more closely related to mammals,” Modesto stated.

The fossil showed that the long-extinct pelycosaur had rows of super-sharp teeth with “finely serrated cutting edges typical of hypercarnivores” that drew at least 70 per cent of their nutritional requirements from meat.

The researchers believe the powerful jaws and skull structure of the pelycosaur and its cousins — “reminiscent of the Komodo dragon of today” — helped it survive and evolve for about 35 million years while many other groups of animals disappeared during a time on Earth characterized by severe habitat upheavals.